Gravity
by Millennium Biscuit
Summary: (Highschool AU) Dain has been pushing the boundaries for a while, and it's finally catching up with him. Contains themes of mental illness, and will not make you happy in spite of being my obligatory highschool AU fic. (Lief x Dain)
1. Part One

**Fandom:** Deltora Quest  
**Pairing:** Lief x Dain  
**Summary:** Suggested by my very lovely and talented friend Hija, with whom I have a pretty exceptional deal; I write stuff and she draws. She suggested the general concept of Dain as a teen delinquent. I took it a bit too seriously. Heaven help you all.

This is the only high school AU I will ever write. I hate the things. xD The title was taken from the song of the same name by The Dresden Dolls.  
**Warnings:** mental illness

* * *

_gravity plays favourites i know because i saw_

_honest to god, officer, it's awful (awful)_

_down at work i'm getting too familiar with the floor_

_trading in my talents by the mouthful_

* * *

"Is there anything you want to tell me, Dain?"

"No, Mrs. Rodda," I say quietly, keeping my gaze in my lap. She sighs. They all do, after a while. They can't understand it; how the shy boy in the back of Advanced History can go from fawnlike to fanatic in a matter of moments. It's alright. I can't, either.

"Obviously this isn't something we can easily overlook," she tells me steadily, "Bede could have been seriously hurt."

I don't bother to tell her that Bede is an asshole who has thought he was hot shit ever since he got elected for Arts Prefect, in spite of the fact that all this really means is that he has a copy of the theatre key and can sneak in with his girlfriend to fuck in the wings when nobody's using it. That would, of course, damage my credibility.

"I didn't mean to." My voice sounds soft. Pathetic. I'm making myself angry, although I know better than to let it show. "It was an accident."

As in, he called me a faggot and I 'accidentally' slammed his head against a wall and broke his nose. She doesn't seem much more convinced than I am, but she doesn't call me out. She's pretty cool, Mrs. Rodda, for a principal. I try not to shove her back when she wheels her chair around her desk to sit beside me instead.

"Is everything alright at home?" she asks gently.

"It's fine." I think my eyes are watering but I can't really feel them. I never can when I'm like this. "Please don't call Jarred."

She pauses for a moment, which is how I know she's going to do it anyway. Then she stands up and pats my shoulder.

"I know you're a good kid, Dain," she lies, "You can go back to class now."

"Thank you," I say numbly.

* * *

I don't go back to class. I sit by the dumpster behind the Social Science block and have a cigarette because my hands won't stop shaking. I need my meds. They're at home. Can't get back in the house without Jasmine's key, and she's in Maths.

Simple stress melts into anxiety and silent, aching rage that yearns to tear out through my skin and leave big, bloody gashes down my arms. I wish I'd smashed Bede's face a bit harder, even though I know that won't make the feeling go away. It never does; not really. Sometimes I think it might never go away and it will boil under my skin for the rest of my life; which might not even be that long, if I carry on like this. That's what everyone says when they think I can't hear them.

_"Very troubled young man. Such a shame."_

Fuck them, anyway.

I have to move, though, because the janitor is coming around to empty some of the bins into the tip. It's not that I care, but last time he saw me smoking he asked if I wanted to know where to buy some pot. If I'm going to get arrested, it's going to be for something glamorous like first degree murder, not bloody pot. I stub the cigarette out on the ground then crush it too hard under my foot, grind it into the ground until I'm _sure_ all the embers are dead.

I don't respond when the janitor mumbles something about whether or not I want to meet the Shadow Lord. I have quite enough crazy in my life already.

* * *

Nobody noticed I was gone in last period except Lief, of course; which is hilarious, really, since he's not even in my class. He's Jasmine's best friend from when they were kids and when her dad adopted me he came over every day for a fucking week to stare at me and give me books or sweets. I can't really remember much of that, but I've still got the books. They're all the same; knights and dragons and grand adventures that none of us would ever get to go on. Lief loves that crap.

"Are you okay? I didn't see you on the way to English."

"Sorry. Mrs. Rodda wanted to see me." I try to look embarrassed, since he tends to fall for that. Predictably, he does.

"About Bede? He didn't hurt you, right?"

"I'm fine." I manage a twitchy little smile, even though my stomach's turning. My arms are itching like I need to scratch them open. He offers me a smile right back, and I quickly change the subject; "Where's Jasmine?"

"Still talking to Barda, I think. Sorry, you must have been waiting for her…"

"It's alright. I don't mind."

Our feet swing gently over the edge of the bench. I try not to think about hurting him, but it's getting easier. I just have to sit still and focus on my breathing. He sits beside me, blissfully unaware, reading all the tacky posters the Health teacher keeps putting up. My personal favourite says '_THIS IS A NO HITTING PLACE_' in giant block letters on a pink and yellow background. What are we, five?

It's a little while before I realise his feet aren't swinging any more and he's looking over at me sort of curiously, like a lost puppy waiting for someone to feed it. I frown at him and he balks, turning his face away again. Then he wets his lips cautiously to speak. "Dain. I really need to talk to you about something."

My stomach twists and I shift away ever so slightly. For me, 'we really need to talk' tends to lead to things like 'this kind of behaviour is not acceptable'.

(_'…you're going to be moving in with Mr Hill and his daughter.'_

_'Did you start the fire, Dain?'_

_'We'll start you on 600mg…'_)

"Dain! We've got to go!" Thank God for Jasmine. I've dodged yet another bullet; now I just have to watch out to see who will fire the next one. "Dad's picking us up."

…Oh.

I wish I'd stayed at the dumpster. I wish I'd climbed _into_ the dumpster and waited there with the rest of the rubbish until the truck came and crushed me down into nothing. It must show on my face because Jasmine's eyes widen and she asks, in the manner of one who has asked many, _many_ times before; "Alright, what did you do?"

I don't say anything. I look down at my lap so I don't have to see the exasperation on her face or, worse, the pity on Lief's. She sighs.

(They all do, after a while.)


	2. Part Two

**Fandom:** Deltora Quest  
**Pairing:** Lief x Dain  
**Summary:** Dain continues to be a problem child in the only highschool AU Annabel will ever write.  
**Warnings:** mental illness, violence

* * *

_hate to break it to you but it's out of my control_

_forces go to work while we are sleeping (sleeping)_

_if i could attack with a more sensible approach_

_obviously that's what i'd be doing (right?!)_

* * *

"You broke someone's nose."

"Yes."

Jarred stares at me and is, as always, unreadable. He's probably annoyed, but part of me likes to think that deep down he's impressed. He was in the army, after all. It seems like the sort of thing he might have done back in the day, except he'd only do it to people who really, really deserved it.

After a pause, he simply asks, "Why?"

I can't speak.

"Why," Jarred repeats, and I feel my stomach sink as if each second I stay silent fills it with another layer of lead.

"I…"

I want to tell the truth. I want him to understand… but the truth is stupid; the truth is weak. Bede insulted me and I reacted without being able to control it. When I look back on it now, with a clear head, I realise I didn't even need to retaliate in the first place.

"Dain, why did you hurt him?"

I feel like a child. I feel like I'm in the social worker's office again being asked if I lit the fire. I open my mouth but nothing happens, so I shake my head.

"Tell me."

"I don't… know." I swallow around the lump in my throat. It doesn't go away. I close my eyes and try to close my ears, too; my nose, my mouth, my pores, my _everything_. I want to close up tight and let nothing else in. Eventually, words get through anyway.

"Did you take your Lithicarb?"

"Yes," I say automatically.

"I took out a new card this morning. It's still full."

"No," I correct, hands bunching into trembling fists.

Jarred stands silently and gets me the meds and a glass of water. He watches me while I pop the pills out of the card.

"Eat something so you don't feel sick," he tells me, and leaves me alone in the kitchen.

Once he's gone I drop the pills down the sink, drink my water, and go to bed.

* * *

I have my nightmare again. It's torture, but it's my torture.

It's the only place I get to see my parents, even if they don't look like my parents any more with their flesh burning from their bones.

* * *

I leave my sports uniform at home to get out of P.E. again. Mr. Unwin doesn't question it. I can't tell if he's nice or just really dense sometimes.

I wait with Lief while he changes. I think I stare a little, but Bede's bandaged nose seems to have served as a deterrent to anyone who might have considered making a remark about it. Before he goes, Lief looks at me for a long time with words teetering on the tip of his tongue. I've seen that look before and it never ended well.

I'm glad when he goes; that's what I tell myself.

I lie down on one of the benches and stare up at the ceiling for a long time. It's all so quiet and still that I can forget the feeling of wood digging into my skin where the gaps in the bench are. It's just me and my eyes tracing the cracks in the ceiling until they die in the corners or burrow under patches of fresh paint; not gone, just covered up.

When I heard the door creak I freeze, hoping to stay in my own space, but Mr Unwin sits down beside me and asks, "Feeling alright?"

"Yes," I say, trying not to take my eyes off the ceiling.

"I thought we could talk while the others are playing."

"About what, Mr Unwin?" I ask innocently, sitting up slowly with the realisation that I'm certainly not going to be left to my thoughts.

"You can call me Barda," he says, smiling in a way that I think is meant to be reassuring.

"Is that alright, sir?" Lief and Jasmine call him that, but they're different. He was friends with Jarred back in the army and apparently he babysat them as kids or something. I'm not Jarred's son. I'm not anyone's son now.

"Sure." He laughs, but I just stare blankly. He coughs. "Er—look. If anything's going on at home or school, you come to me, alright?"

I just keep staring at him. Is this supposed to impress me? I've heard it from a thousand adults and I know what it means: 'come and tell me about yourself so I can let the others know what the hell's wrong with you'.

"Thank you, but…"

"I can keep a secret," he assures me, tapping the side of his nose.

"…I don't know if I'd be comfortable with that."

He hesitates to process it, then tries a different approach. "I'm not that old, you know; I can still remember being a teenager and it's not easy for anyone, but for you—"

The hair on the back of my neck prickles and I cut him off before I can think about being polite. "What about me?"

There's a long pause in which the nausea rises up in my stomach again and my nails dig hard into my palms.

"Dain… Jasmine told me how your parents—"

"No."

"I know it can't be easy to go through—"

"No!"

I'm on my feet before I think. It feels like all of me is shaking, burning (like they did).

"Dain—"  
"I'm going to kill her! I'm going to fucking _kill_ her!" There is not a single part of me that is not serious. I'm already picturing it, imagining wrapping my hands around her throat and slamming her against the wall, making her look at me and realise the consequences of running her fucking mouth about things she has no business telling anyone.

Barda is standing up to catch me. I think his hands grab my shoulders briefly but I don't even feel them; they're just a brief obstacle I have to struggle out from under. If he's saying my name I can't hear him.

I can't hear anything.

I can't feel anything.

I don't want to.

A few heads turn once I storm into the gym and Jasmine's eyes go sort of wide in the few seconds before I hit her across the face. There's this awful silence afterwards before the rest of the class reacts. I feel like I've gone limp before someone grabs me and steers me away. "Don't touch me," I keep saying, but they only hold my arms still when I try to hit them.

Then we're outside (I think we're behind the English block but I can't really tell) and suddenly I'm coming back down and thinking fuck, fuck, why didn't I take my meds.

"Why did you do that? What happened?"

Lief. Why did it have to be Lief?

"Why do you care?!" I'm shouting before I can stop myself. "What does it matter to you?! She's the one you care about, not me!"

"Dain, what are you talking about?"

"It doesn't matter why I did it! It doesn't matter! Just leave me alone!" He reaches out and takes hold of my shoulders and I squirm away but his grip is steady. "I said don't _touch_ me! Don't _touch me_, don't touch me don'ttouchmedon'ttouchme—"

* * *

He's still there when I calm down even if I can't imagine why for the life of me. I scarcely remember what happened before we came outside; don't remember anything except watching Lief in the changing room and Lief _here_, now.

I don't remember when he put his arms around me but they're still there and I just shiver as I let myself lean against him, swallowing hard. What is he doing? Why is he wasting his time?

"Go," I tell him, but it barely comes out as a simple word let alone a command.

"It's alright," he assures me gently, and I want to say no—no, it isn't fucking alright. Any idiot can see that.

"_Please_." My voice has to work its way up through my tight throat. I'm not going to cry in front of Lief or anyone; I promised myself that years ago and I've come too far.

"I can't just leave you," he insists. That's what does it and all of a sudden I'm crying for what feels like the first time in years (is it? I can't remember). My head goes down against his shoulder and he cradles it there, stroking my hair like I'm a cat or something. He doesn't let go for a very long time. "I _do_ care about you, Dain. I—"

"Don't," I choke, because I know that this is only the beginning of the end. "Please, just go."


	3. Part Three

**Fandom:** Deltora Quest  
**Pairing:** Lief x Dain  
**Summary:** A little more exposition on Jarred's role in this segment. He was actually my favourite to incorporate into the AU. Dain is challenging to write as a purely human character as I wanted to consolidate his true and false personalities into a single entity. I hope this is getting across for some people.  
**Warnings:** mental illness, violence

* * *

_Necks are cracking sideways,_

_Hit me from the back side._

_I am on the white side,_

_You are on the black side. _

_Cut a piece that's bite size, _

_Shoot me from my good side._

_If you got a straight line, _

_This would be a good time. _

* * *

Jasmine wasn't seriously hurt, or at least that's what I hear from the murmurs in the changing room with my ear pressed to the door. That's lucky, I suppose. I don't know. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still angry.

I don't go home that night. Before the bell rings I climb over one of the school's side fences into the park and start walking. I don't know what Jasmine will do, what Jarred will do (what Lief will do?) but it doesn't matter. They can't find me when I don't want to be found.

I walk and walk and can't tell if it takes hours or minutes to get to where I'm going; to the empty lot on Tora Drive with just a little tin shed and a pair of white wooden crosses on the side of the road.

I sit down with my back to the fence and stare at the big, black scar on the ground where my house used to be. They never rebuilt over it because there was never really any point; nobody likes living in a place that death has touched. Maybe in ten years, twenty years, fifty years, the burn marks will fade and the grass will grow back and somebody will think "now, why doesn't somebody build a house there?" Nobody will remember my parents or how they died. Not even me.

I never really saw it, after all. The fire started at night and it was only chance that I was in the kitchen, down the opposite end of the house from them. I think my father had been talking about replacing the smoke alarm a few days before.

I remember smelling smoke and going outside to see if it was one of the neighbours. It wasn't.

The fire started with the heater in the master bedroom. My parents died of smoke inhalation, in their sleep. Then they burned up in their bed. Never felt a thing.

That's what it says, anyway. In my nightmares they're usually on their feet and screaming while their skin blackens and peels back to show sizzling red flesh on faces that aren't really faces any more. I don't know where the image came from, because I never saw their bodies and there are days when I'm not even sure I remember what they looked like, sounded like.

I like to think I have fond memories here—playing with my mother in the vegetable garden, Dad teaching me to ride a bike—but the fact of the matter is that I don't have a single specific memory about my family before that night. Would it be different if I did? Would I have coped better? Would I be like this now?

It doesn't matter, really. I'm never going to know what it would be like, because that's _not_ what it's like. All I know is what it's like to fall asleep in short, rough grass and the ashes of the house you grew up in but can't remember, and how it feels to not know what home is.

* * *

"What are you doing? What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?!"

Jarred is the one who finds me in the morning and he's absolutely freaking out like I've never seen him before. When he takes hold of my forearm and yanks me to my feet, I'm too stunned to protest.

"I don't—"

"No. Never mind. I don't want to hear it. You are coming home right now. _Right now_, do you hear me?!"

I pick up my satchel and straighten up again and he stares at me, wide-eyed and furious. I feel like he's going to hit me—he probably wants to—but he just places his hand on my back and half-guides, half-pushes me back to the car.

"How did you know where I was?" I ask once he starts driving.

He stays quiet, teeth gritted, and I know that there is no hope of talking my way out of this one. Then: "Old newspaper article. Had the street name in the photo."

That's sort of a cross between terrifying and impressive. I just nod.

"If you even think about putting me through that again, you're going to be in a home before you know what hit you."

I know he doesn't mean that (I hope he doesn't mean it)—I know he's just angry—but hearing that feels like a full slap in the face. I shouldn't be surprised. It's just another reminder that I'm disposable; Jarred isn't really my father, so he doesn't have to look after me if he doesn't want to. He already has one seventeen year old, Jasmine, who is picture perfect. She's his _baby_, the one whose picture he wore under his bulletproof vest when he was overseas, and there I was yesterday, thinking about choking the life out of the light of his life. I'm not just sick; I _am_ the sickness itself, slowly seeping in to ruin their lives too.

When he stops the car, I don't move. I ask, "Why did you adopt me?"

He's silent again. He does this often when he's trying to think of a way to avoid telling the truth without lying. Then he shocks me.

"Anna was pregnant when she died." Here it comes: the honesty that I, as a liar, just can't face. "When she started to get sick they told her to have an abortion. But she wouldn't. She didn't want to get rid of our son like that."

It's my turn to stay quiet. My chest clenches. "So why me?"

"Because," he says, with the barest hint of a crack in his voice, "I knew what it was like to lose two people I loved. I thought we could help one another."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I."


	4. Part Four

**Fandom:** Deltora Quest  
**Pairing:** Lief x Dain  
**Summary:** A little known fact: pretty much the whole premise of this AU was to write a sex scene. I know, I'm shallow. This sex scene can be found in this segment. Or, well… sort of. Not really.  
**Warnings:** mental illness, sexual content

* * *

_gravity works slowly if you notice it at all_

_some of us are getting mighty lucky (aren't we?)_

_if you had to live with this you'd rather lie than fall_

_you think that I can't fly? well you just watch me, watch me!_

* * *

I pretend to take my medicine again the next morning. I know it's stupid, intellectually, but the same impulse that makes me want to hurt people also makes me want to damage myself. It's a vicious cycle that I'm aware of, but unable to interfere with. For some reason nobody seems to understand that, so I don't bother explaining any more. Then again, most people don't ask in the first place.

We're halfway to school when I look over at the bruise on Jasmine's jaw and realise that I'm almost certainly going to be back in Mrs. Rodda's office for that the moment I walk into class.

So I don't walk into class. I go back behind the Social Studies block and sit by the dumpster and light myself another cigarette. I know I'll be in trouble if someone catches me but at this point I'm probably going to be suspended anyway, so who really cares any more?

Having made up my mind that I don't care, when I hear footsteps just around the corner I'm adamant that it doesn't matter if it's an axe murderer or the goddamn Virgin Mary. Unsurprisingly, however, it's neither of those people.

"Dain, Ms. Rodda is looking for—are you _smoking_?"

Lief looks legitimately shocked, as if me having a cigarette is any more unsettling than me threatening to murder my adoptive sister. I try, harder than ever, not to care. "Oh. I beg your pardon. Did you want one?"

"Dain, put those away, you're going to get in trouble!" He tries to take hold of my wrist. The impulse arises, briefly, to put it out on his hand or even just the crisp white of his shirt… but I don't want to. I. Do. Not. Want. To.

I tell myself that so hard that I end up scrunching it down on my own thigh instead. This is not one of my greatest plans to date, but the white flash of pain seems to ground me back in my own body. The cigarette drops limply from my hand and Lief grabs for my shoulders, then my knee, crouching to see if I'm alright. What is he doing? Why is he bothering?

"Dain," he says finally, and his voice is a half sob, "Why are you doing all this? What happened?"

I want to say something smart, but the pain in my leg is keeping me sober.

"You and me and Jasmine—I thought everything was fine. I thought_you_ were fine, I never even knew…" He shakes his head. "I just don't get it! It's like—it's like you're a totally different person, and I can't—"

He looks me in the eyes for all of five seconds before he bursts into tears. It's like something out of a movie—someone actually _crying_over _me_.

"I loved you," he chokes out, and it's so perfectly, innocently sincere as only teenage declarations of love can be. "I thought you were the most amazing person I'd ever met."

"And now you don't," I say through gritted teeth. I was ready to be Ms. Rodda's lost cause, to be Jarred's, but I realise I was never ready to be Lief's.

"No!" He dries his eyes on his sleeve, and stiffens his jaw. He's looking me right in the eyes, with strength and vulnerability laid out right in front of me. I shiver. "I do. You _are_."

I grab him by the tie just as he leans in to kiss me, one hand on my shoulder and the other on the wall behind me. It's clumsy, but it's Lief, so what did I expect? He pulls back, sits back down beside me and gives me this sort of embarrassed half-smile. I yank on his tie and kiss him again, lips crushing hard and harsh against his. I can feel him trying to be gentle, trying to soothe me with one hand stroking through my hair again, but he gives up after a while and pulls me up into his lap, hands fisting in my hair and in the back of my shirt.

"Oh," he whispers when our lips part, gazing up at me all flushed and breathless. Something jolts through me like electricity. It's the same impulse as when I hit Jasmine, but stronger somehow. I'm grabbing his forearms, sliding out of his lap and tugging him to his feet. He smiles nervously. "Uh, what are you doing?"

"We're going to the bathroom," I announce.

"What? Why?" His heels dig into the gravel briefly before he relaxes and follows me into the toilet block, still flushed and pleasantly clueless. I kiss him again.

He smiles against my lips, trying to cup my face and stroke my hair behind my ears; but I wrap my arms around his neck and make him walk me backward against the wall. I want him to crush me against the concrete until I can't feel or hear or see anything else. This won't fix me—I'm starting to think nothing will—but it might help me forget for a little while.

"It's going to be all right." I don't realise I'm shaking until he takes my hands to keep them still. He leans against me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "Come on; let's go back to class together."

I shake my head and lean to kiss him again, harder, deeper, and then I'm sinking down on my knees before I really know what I'm thinking, pressing my cheek to his thigh, hands kneading at his hips. I don't care about being caught. I don't care about being dirty.

I can't tell if he's staying still because he wants me to do it or because he's too scared, but in the heat of the moment I'm not really thinking about it a lot anyway. I should feel hyped up on close contact but instead I'm just numb; I keep pushing to see if I'll feel something else, but I don't.

"We can't—we shouldn't," he manages breathlessly, "this is crazy…"

And just like that I realise that it really _is_ crazy. _I'm_ crazy. I stand up numbly and wipe my mouth, stepping back shakily until I bump into the sink. Lief seems to be torn between reaching out for me and doing up his pants again.

I run before he can make that call.


	5. Part Five

**Fandom:** Deltora Quest  
**Pairing:** Lief x Dain  
**Summary:** I'm of the firm opinion that there's no such thing as a happy ending for these two, even if it is an AU, but nonetheless this is all for now. There will be an epilogue at a later date, but you're not going to like it.  
**Warnings:** mental illness

* * *

_the sky is always falling down on me_

_the sky is always falling, falling_

_the sky is always falling down on me_

_so officer forgive me please_

* * *

The letter arrives the next morning to tell me I've been suspended until next term. Jarred and Jasmine say nothing, which is worse than them saying a thousand awful things. I make a habit of packing my clothes and belongings into old grocery bags when I have time to myself, arranging them in order of importance in case I end up having to run away. I think of writing a note in advance but can't think of anyone I want to explain myself to.

Lief comes over on Saturday to see Jasmine. I draw my curtains and shut my door and wonder if maybe he'll think I'm out. He knows I'm not, of course; I have nowhere to be. Eventually he comes and lets himself in quietly, just looks at me sitting there on the floor with my bags.

_We can't be friends any more, _I'm waiting for him to say; _you ruined everything._

"Are you going somewhere?" he asks anxiously. He doesn't sit down, doesn't try to get comfortable, which I'm glad for.

"I don't know." Jarred hasn't said he's kicking me out or putting me in a home yet, but maybe he won't warn me. Maybe I should leave before anything happens at all.

There's a long, awkward silence. I try to fill it with the rustling of plastic as I fish something out of the bedside cabinet and push it noisily into a bag. I just catch him murmuring, "Sorry."

"It's not your fault." I should apologise too, but I don't. I can't.

"I thought maybe—" He kneels down beside me, plucking at a few loose fibres on the carpet. "I thought we could… talk. Maybe walk somewhere."

I feel my shoulders tense up. "I don't think that's a good idea."

He sighs. They all do, in the end. "Don't you like me any more?"

I'm not quite sure what to tell him. I've more than proven I'm a hazard to myself and others. Part of me, the sober part, just wants to keep people at arms length so it can't hurt them. The rest doesn't care enough about anything to even acknowledge it as a problem.

"I'm sick, Lief," I say finally, and it's not meant to sound self-piteous but it does anyway. "I don't even like myself."

"I like you," he says quickly, reaching to grip me by the shoulder and turn me towards him. "And—and that doesn't matter. You can get better. I'll help you. Me—me and Jasmine and your dad…"

"Jarred's going to throw me out." I twist away from him, gazing back over my bags. Should I have hidden them? Will Lief tell on me? (Did he tell on me about what happened in the bathroom? He wouldn't, would he?)

"He'd _never_ do that," Lief insists firmly. "Jarred loves you. All of us_love_ you, Dain, we just—we just want to help. So let us. Let me…"

* * *

I make Lief stay beside me, holding my hand (that was his idea, actually) while I take my medication. It's not an instant cureall—there isn't one—but it's a step in the right direction at the very least.

* * *

There are a few days of backlash. The lithium makes me feel sick and it's as if the illness inside me is fighting me every step of the way (_don't bother,_ it seems to say, _one day won't matter, you don't need it_). Jarred picks up on it pretty quickly; when Lief isn't there (as he is almost every day after school), he watches me until I take it.

One time, he takes his Prazosin in front of me.

(I didn't even know. I didn't even realise it was possible to be sick as an adult, a parent, a pillar of strength.)

Jasmine has been strangely quiet, staying in her room with the chinchilla or out in the garden by the aviary. The idea of speaking to her doesn't seem to have occurred to me for some reason; perhaps it's that I'm certain now that she doesn't want to speak to me either.

"What's with you and Dain?" I hear her asking Lief one night while they're sitting at the kitchen table over homework. I also hear his pathetically flustered reaction.

"Nothing, nothing! I'm just—I mean, we're friends, right? We're all friends, I'm just—nothing."

I wait at the door with my empty glass. I wait to hear what it is they really say about me when they think I'm not listening.

"Well, it's weird."

"What's weird?" Lief's voice has gone into that really dorky high register it tends to creep up to when he's trying to lie and failing.

"Well, he's sort of my brother." Sort of, not quite; I genuinely like that she makes that distinction. "It's like… I don't know."

"Wait, wait, uh—what exactly do you think is going on?"

"Lief, you're the most _obvious_ person I know. The way you keep touching his hand and—I don't know—just _looking_ at him, it's…"

I feel my throat tense, not because I didn't notice those things either but because it doesn't feel fair for _her_ to notice them.

"…I mean, we're best friends and I didn't even know you were gay!"

"I'm not! What are you saying—"

"I'm saying you _like_ my brother and you didn't even tell me." There's hurt in her voice laced with something more; I clench my teeth and force myself quiet in the long silence that follows.

"Yeah," Lief says finally, softly. "I'm sorry."

"No, it's fine, it's just…" She sighs. "You could have just told me."

"I didn't know," he mumbles. "You can't really tell when you're going to fall for someone, can you?"

"I could have," she retorts bitterly. I kick the door open and go to put my glass in the sink before she can say any more.

* * *

The week school goes out, Lief's parents leave for the weekend and he asks me over to housesit. Actually, he asks me _and_ Jasmine, but she says no.

Lief is utterly adamant that we watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one night. _I_ am utterly adamant that we make out instead, but that doesn't quite happen until about halfway through The Two Towers when I manage to convince him that I am marginally more interesting than the battle of Helm's Deep. After that he miraculously forgets about the movie and lies back on the couch with me nestled up close against his front, mouth against the crook of his neck. It's not like the first time. It feels for once like it's just us; not him and me and whatever it is inside my head, but _us_.

"I'm glad you're coming back next term," he says later in the silence (I managed to sneakily switch off the TV in the middle of one of Gollum's duologues).

"Ugh, don't remind me." I play it off as a normal-teenager-who-hates-school sort of thing, but Lief frowns.

"What's wrong? It'll be fine, Dain; don't you want to come back?"

"Not really." I bury my face in his shirt without further comment. He reaches down to stroke my hair as he seems to have grown fond of.

"Well, it's just one more year. Then we can do whatever we want."

"Mm."

"Hey, Dain, what are you going to do when you leave school?"

I realise I've never thought about it before; that the idea of a tomorrow hasn't really existed for me in a long time. To suddenly be told that I have a future seems surreal. "I don't know yet."

"I think I'm going to go to teacher's college," he says.

"You, teaching?" I smile.

"Yeah," he says, hand trailing down from my hair to rub my back lazily. "I like kids. It'd be really cool."

My stomach clenches. "Aren't you going to have your own kids?"

"Well, I can't. I'll be with you."

"How do you know?" I blurt it out before I can help it and it feels like a plea, not an accusation. "How do you know I'll still be around?"

He hugs me closer in his arms and hums a little laugh. "I have a good feeling."

Suddenly, so do I.


End file.
